Word of Saint Paul is stuff that the secondary creators (such as major actors in a movie) have said, or what those with close connections to the secondary or primary creators (such as close friends or family members) have said.

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Word of Dante is stuff that neither the creators nor anyone remotely involved with the work has said is true about their universe — but everyone assumes it is true because an independent authority, scholar of the work, Big Name Fan, or the creator of an adaptation has said it — often with supporting arguments. It's a kind of ascended Fanon (though not Ascended Fanon proper). A more literary criticism-friendly technical term for it would be deuterocanonicity.

Why does it matter? Because everyone thinks the Word of Dante applies to the original work, and so it gets mixed into future adaptations and popular allusions. It can even overrule original canonicity (if that isn't known as much as it's known of) or Word of God. Take our Trope Namer: if it weren't for Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy, later writers wouldn't speak of hell having circles with specific Karmic Punishments. Hell is depicted in broad strokes in The Bible. A place of darkness and wailing and gnashing of teeth, a lake of fire — that's really as specific as it gets. That there are specific places in Hell to send the unchaste, the literal infidels, and the betrayers is all Dante's idea. Ironically for this trope, although Dante's work is highly influential in Western Culture, it should be noticed that no branch of Christianity considers it canonical at all.

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This is especially likely to happen if there is no one who can unambiguously provide Word of God. Without Word of God or Word of Saint Paul, Word of Dante is the strongest authority you have on how to interpret the canon. Often created when an Expanded Universe claims to be "official" and thus canonical, but is ignored by the primary canon. If there is a Word of God, however, then what Word of Dante does get produced is just as likely as Fanon to be Jossed at some point.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Quite a few Dragon Ball fans (including some on this wiki) believe that the name of Lunch's blond gun-crazy alter ego is "Kushami". The name was coined by an American translator in the mid-1990s in order to distinguish between "Good Lunch" and "Bad Lunch", using the Japanese word for "sneeze".

There are also quite a few fans who think that Dr. Gero hates Goku for killing his son (upon whom Android #16 is modeled); in reality, Akira Toriyama said that Gero's son shot dead by an enemy soldier, and Gero just hates Goku for destroying the Red Ribbon Army. The confusion seems to persist in part because Dragon Ball Z Abridgeddid pin the son's death on Goku (with a very memorable piece of original animation), and partly because the creators of Abridged reference obscure but canon pieces of Dragon Ball lore all the timenote Most prominently making reference to Android #17's desire to be a park ranger, which was revealed in the same interview as the information about Gero's son, and which would be confirmed when #17 returned in Dragon Ball Super.

The Funimation dub uses male pronouns to refer to the character Crona, leading many who watched the anime to believe that Crona is officially male. At the same time, an early online fan translation of a Soul Eater chapter refers to Crona as Medusa's "daughter" causing many of those who read the manga to believe that Crona is officially a girl. Unfortunately, neither is right. Crona, in both the original anime and manga, is referred to using genderless pronouns and as Medusa's "child". Funimation had to settle with male pronouns by default, and the translation in the manga is wrong. Many fans have decided to just call Crona an "it".

It's commonly thought that the name of Maka's unseen mother is "Kami" because one translation group mistook part of the Japanese word for "wife" which her ex-husband Spirit used in reference to her, for her name. In actuality her name is never given.

In Elfen Lied, Number Three (The Silpelit who infected Kurama, causing Mariko to be born a Diclonius) is often given the name Sanban by fans, even though that is simply the Number Three's Japanese translation, unlike Number Seven Nana, which is both a name and number. Further, a listing that only says it is from an official site states that Three is Nana's older sister. Nothing said in the manga or anime supports this.

Axis Powers Hetalia fandom has tons of these, partly because of Real Life being something of an alternative source material, partly because the webcomic is scattered between the site, the author's blog and — in some cases — only on fansites because strips were removed or lost from the main site. There's also the scanlations with often questionable quality translations, although they have been easier to find as of late. You can find examples in the Fanon page.

An early mistranslation of Yajima's name ended up calling him "Shitou" instead. Since subsequent chapters call him "Yajima", many fans were led to believe his full name was actually "Shitou Yajima", to the point where the character was briefly credited as "Shitou" in the English dub of the anime.

People outside of Japan have pegged Lucy's birth date as July 1 due to promotional text written by the editor-in-chief at Weekly Shonen Magazine with absolutely zero input from Mashima, who never revealed any of the characters' birthdays. This led to Mashima tweeting his confusion when foreign fans suddenly started wishing Lucy a happy birthday, and later reinforcing that Lucy's official birth date (at least in Japan) remains unknown.

Mashiro from The Pet Girl of Sakurasou is usually taken by Western viewers as autistic. However, this was never mentioned in the original; just that the descriptions about her follows textbook definitions of autism so closely that they just can't give any other explanation.

Apple Seed has a technical manual that details the history of Earth that leads up to the current world the series takes place in. It establishes that the Cold War came to a peaceful resolution in 1986 which resulted in 1/3rd of the United States becoming the Russo-American Alliance note the 13 Colonial states, Indiana, Ohio, California, Oregon, Alaska, & Hawaii, that World War III broke out in 1996, and in 1997 a giant meteor struck Beijing, China. As a result of the war and the meteor, the upper hemisphere of the planet has been severely damaged, with new lakes and seas formed and scattered all over. A map of this world can be seen at the end of 2nd Gig despite there being no mention of these events.

Kenji Kamiyama took this foundation and added upon it in Stand Alone Complex, establishing that the 2nd American Civil War in 2016 resulted in the remaining 2/3rds of the US being split again, with 1/3rd of the states becoming Imperial Americana aka the American Empire. (The country was split up by each of the states themselves, resulting in Imperial Americana now occupying the greatest land mass of the United States note everything east of New Mexico and Colorado, and everything south of South Dakota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, and the 13 Colonial states. They also have Washington D.C. itself. The United States Of America was reduced to the Rocky Mountain states and the border states along Canada. The series also establishes that World War IV begins in 2019, and that Japan has developed technology to lay the foundation for the existence of the Bioroids that appear in Appleseed.

Real Drive is an interesting example in this equation. Originally, it was going to take place in the Stand Alone Complex universe, but the director decided he would rather just make it its own universe instead, since it is mostly a Slice of Life series. However, Real Drive uses the exact same technologies established in Stand Alone Complex: Cyberbrains, full prosthetic bodies, Operator androids, and a type of nanotechnology that was developed from the "Radiation Scrubber Nanotechnology" — which itself was the project that a prominent character in Stand Alone Complex was the director overseeing the development process. All of this technology is visually presented to look just like it does in Stand Alone Complex, which makes the similarities too close to simply accept that the director said that it takes place in its own universe.

One Piece has the Databooks, which are published to give supplementary material not crucial to the main storyline, but that many fans would probably like to know. Just how true they are, however, is up for debate as of April 2014, when something very important that was stated to be false in a Databook was confirmed as true in the main storyline: Sabo is alive.

Nowhere is Misty from Pokémon canonically referred to as "Misty Waterflower", but you'll rarely see her surname given as anything else. "Waterflower" comes from the dub title of episode 7: "The Water Flowers Of Cerulean City". This is a metaphor for her sisters due to their Floral Theme Naming, but they are not called this in canonicity either; the term used for said sisters as a group is "The Sensational Sisters". Several other characters are given last names in fanfics as well, but this is the only case with supposed in-show "evidence". The whole need for a last name in the first place came from the Dub giving Ash a last name in order to avoid Lip Lock.note If Satoshi has a last name in the original, it was never given.

Inuyasha, being a rather old Long Runner at this point, has built up quite a lot of fanon, with some of it managing to fit this trope more so than most, thanks to being either hosted on popular anime information sites and/or accidentally inspired by/derived in part from quirks of the popular Viz Media English translations of the series, particularly the dub of the anime. Chief among the issues is that since English doesn't use honorifics or politeness levels the way Japanese does, and the translations were made when anime was still "localized" quite a bit more for American audiences, they had to find creative ways to convey the especially-rude or especially-respectful ways that some characters spoke to each other with...and in some cases work around the lack of a known name or gender for a character. Issues that this helped cause include:

The assumption that Inuyasha curses a lot because his crude dialect and habit of not using honorifics in the original Japanese was rendered in English as "rough" speech with added cursing. Bonus points for fans assuming he likes to call Kagome a "bitch" because a rude form of "you" was translated as "you bitch" in a handful of early chapters.

Confusion over Kagome's cat's sex (canonically it's unspecified), particularly notable since it resulted in fans assuming a Calico cat was male, which as noted in that link is highly unlikely, but results from the English translation sticking a male pronoun where a pronoun happened to be required in English.

The English-speaking fandom largely and inaccurately concluding that Inuyasha's older brother Sesshomaru is some sort of demon noble with an official domain in "the Western Lands", whose father passed on the title "Lord of the Western Lands". It's extremely popular in fanworks and even discussion among fans who often work on the assumption it's canonical... and yet literally none of this is in the original manga or even anime. In fact, in contrast to the idea that he inherited some sort of land, servants and noble title, Sesshomaru at one point is shown pondering the possibility that his father might not have meant to leave him anything at all. Things like this are why there's at least one entire blog that got devoted to discussing widespread fanon for this one series - fanon and outright Word of Dante occurs in the fandom with frustrating regularity for anybody trying to keep canonicity straight.

Comic Books

An unpublished story by Steve Gerber would have established the Howard the Duck stories not written by Steve Gerber as techno-art by the Krylorian Chireep, depicting an alternate reality version of Howard the Duck. The unofficial crossover in Spider-Man Team-Up #5 and Savage Dragon/Destroyer Duck suggests Howard's further appearances are depicting Howard's clone replacement. Marvel has not confirmed either story as canon, and Steve Gerber's Howard the Duck Volume 3 treats Howard as the original.

Adrian "Ozymandias" Veidt from Watchmen is often, in fandom, depicted as German, the son of a Nazi officer, and driven to his own well-intentioned extremism out of a keen desire to atone for what he feels is an inherited murderous stain. All of this was invented by Matthew Goode, who played him in the film version — in fact, there are hints that despite his looking like the Nazi party's own invented Aryan ideal, Veidt in the graphic novel very well might be the son of Jews who fled the Nazis. He's presumably named for actor Conrad Veidt, a German socialist who left the country because of how much he hated the Nazis. Before Watchmen makes it explicit that something similar to the latter is what happened, though whether the Veidts were Jewish is never established for certain.

Veidt is also commonly believed in Internet circles to have an artificial right hand. This dates back to a Intercontinuity Crossover roleplaying board in 2010, where it happened as a function of the plot specific to that board, and permanently remained the case in that continuity afterwards. What happened was that the boards wiki was accidentally taken for canon by unwitting fans, most likely due to a high level of hits from the main image link. There are related words of Dante from the same RP, such as a deceased younger sister named Klara, but the Artificial Limbs idea was the stickiest.

Films — Animated

Walt Disney has changed many classic fairy tales and literary classics in ways the general audience now considers to be the "official" version.

The Three Little Pigs originally had the wolf eat the first two pigs with the one that built his house from bricks being the sole survivor. Disney's cartoon made it standard that the two pigs just run to the third pigs' house and survive from the wolf's hungry stomach.

Snow White: Most people base this fairy tale on Disney's iconic film adaptation. For instance: many theatre actresses wear the same dress Snow White does in this film, even if their version is closer to the original fairy tale! Several things people now associate with the fairy tale are actually inventions by Disney  including the seven distinct personalities of the dwarfs, their names (which are actually trademarked and don't you forget it!), and even the famous scene where Snow White is kissed back to life by the prince! (In the original the prince's servants accidentally drop Snow White's coffin on the ground, causing the piece of poison apple to dislodge from her throat, thus curing her)

Films — Live-Action

Predators states the events of Predator took place in Guatemala. Though Dutch's team was briefed in Guatemala at the beginning of the movie, Steven E. de Souza included the country Val Verde in shows and movies he has co-written, including Adventure Inc., Commando, Die Hard 2, and Supercarrier, and has stated in interviews that Predator takes place on Val Verde. The Xenopedia wiki goes with de Souza's explanation, calling the explanation in Predators incorrect.

The Technical Commentaries fit this trope so well that much of their information overrides canonicity in the eyes of fans. The best example is the class name of the Star Destroyers from the original trilogy. Canonically, they're Imperial-Class according to the EU, the official website, and Word of God. Dr. Saxton, who wrote the technical commentaries, dubbed them "Imperator-Class" on the grounds that "Imperial" is a stupid name for a warship; he assumed that the Empire followed American and British tradition in naming ships and classes. Many fan works use "Imperator-class" and the name was eventually canonized in Revenge of the Sith: Incredible Cross-Sections (penned by Saxton as an author for Lucasfilm Licensing). Go, Roman naming-schemes!

Though there has been a HMS Imperial, so the name isn't that unlikely...

Though it's still established that, presumably out of pure ego, the Emperor changed the name to Imperial-class after he turned the Republic into The Empire.

Probably the most widely accepted piece of fanon (even on this very wiki) is the idea that Palpatine, Thrawn (and sometimes even Revan) were actually Well Intentioned Extremists, uniting the galaxy under a single powerful rule to best prepare them for the arrival of an even more powerful foe, specifically the Yuuzhan Vong.

Not mentioned explicitly as the Vong, but Palpatine's agent in Outbound Flight tells Thrawn that the Emperor is trying to unite the galaxy in an attempt to stand against an (at the time unnamed) enemy from beyond the Galactic Rim. This is what first convinces Thrawn to side with the Emperor, as he had encountered an unknown extra-galactic enemy before. Kreia in Knights of the Old Republic II makes a similar comment about Revan, but that later turned out to be the True Sith, members of the order that fled into solitude sometime around or before the Great Hyperspace War.

Room 237 is a documentary profiling many of the theories posited by critics and obsessive internet fans about Kubrick's The Shining. Some of these theories have proliferated elsewhere. For example, Cracked included the theory that the film is a metaphor for American Indian oppression in an article, presenting the theory as definitively true.

Cracked also brought visibility to filmmaker/critic Robert Ager's evidence that HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey was designed to be a criticism of the company IBM.

Inception shows the agents to have Reality Warper powers within a dream allowing them to alter it as they see fit. Many fans have since adopted the belief that this altering is what's allowing them to use the various action movie tropes, like the Pin-Pulling Teeth or the Bloodless Carnage. This would make the use of almost any trope justified by the narrative, at least in the scenes that take place inside a dream. (And as for the rest...)

Literature

In the Warrior Cats fandom, there was a superfan called Su Susann who claimed her headcanons (of which a few were thought to be absurd by the fandom) to have been confirmed to be canon by Vicky Holmes, who was (at the time) one of the authors of the series. Vicky later refuted these claims and stated that while she was grateful for Su being such an active contributor on the Warrior Cats Wiki and liked that she was sharing her headcanons and OCs, none of Sus headcanons and OCs were canon. This revelation, along with Vicky leaving the Warrior Cats team of authors sometime after, caused the admins of the Wiki to send out an apology and get to work on removing Sus headcanons and OCs from the site.

The Cthulhu Mythos includes various authors contemporary with and following after H.P. Lovecraft whose stories are considered canonical. Some works written previous to the original Mythos are also considered canonically part of it, like some of the works of Ambrose Bierce and The King in Yellow. It's worth noting that Lovecraft himself actively encouraged other authors to play around in his universe.

Gone writer Micheal Grant never specifically said that Zil Sperry was gay or bi. But judging from his narration chapters, you can see where one would get this idea, so it's basically Fanon.

Before Perrault got hold of the "Sleeping Beauty", the prince found her asleep in the forest and raped her without waking her. It was only one of their children sucking the splinter from her finger that finally woke her. Whereupon the prince went home to his wife

In the best-known version of "Rapunzel", the old witch learns that Rapunzel has been visited in her tower when Rapunzel foolishly asks her, "Mother Gothel, why are you so much harder to pull up than my prince?" In the first printing of the Grimms' story collection, Rapunzel's question is, "Mother Gothel, why have my dresses grown so tight around the waist?"

When old Bill was alive it's uncertain if he ever officially sanctioned any publication of his works. Printed versions from the time vary wildly in quality: the first quarto edition of Hamlet is widely considered to be a garbled bootlegnote Here's the first few lines of the play's most famous speech, as printed in Q1: "To be, or not to be, I there's the point, / To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all: / No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes, / For in that dreame of death, when wee awake, / And borne before an euerlasting Iudge, / From whence no passenger euer retur'nd, / The vndiscouered country, at whose sight / The happy smile, and the accursed damn'd." whereas the second quarto is much more coherent. The Word of St. Paul version of his plays is the First Folio, a collection put together in 1623 by some actor pals in The King's Men. By the 1800s, editors had begun to assemble their own editions by cutting and pasting together what they regarded as probably the most authentic bits from the good quartos and the Folio, and this is still done with most editions for school or professional use (e.g. the Penguin edition) — these are the Word of Dante versions. Basically, scholars have been in an echo chamber for two centuries, debating what can be considered "authentic" Shakes. Today, some editions of Hamlet and King Lear include different versions of the play, leaving it entirely up to readers to decide their own version to use.note The extent to which early Shakespeare editions differ textually from each other can be overstated: there are only "bad quarto" versions of four plays, and of the 36 plays in the First Folio, 18 had never been printed before: The Other Wiki has a full list here.

In no surviving notes on "Romeo and Juliet" are there any references to a balcony — the word didn't exist in English until decades later. Act II Scene ii, the infamous Balcony Scene, is largely a product of a later play that copied some of the same dialogue — Thomas Otway's "The History and Fall of Caius Marius." It does however appear in most movie versions, and Otway borrowed some of the same dialogue that appeared first in "Romeo and Juliet," so it's understandable that the two would get crossed.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is often taken as canonical for Hamlet, even if incorporating a postmodern look at the nature of theatre into a straightforward if rich story about revenge makes no sense. (It helps that Tom Stoppard is careful about making sure when in Hamlet the various events of his own play happen.) Even people who can't consider the events canonical "know" that they must be either allowed for or explicitly ruled out, which gives Rosencrantz and Guildenstern importance they would not otherwise have. The film of Hamlet with Laurence Olivier cut out the pair entirely because they were minor characters with little effect on the main plot — which is why Tom Stoppard wrote his play in the first place. In modern versions, even ones that don't consider Stoppard canonical, this is all but unthinkable. (The Mel Gibson version shows their execution, for instance.)

The author never described the eponymous character as wearing a deerstalker cap or smoking a calabash pipe.note The closest he came was in "Silver Blaze", where Holmes is noted as wearing a cap with earflaps, but that's because of the illustrations, not vice versa. Those are elements that were popularized by illustrations — including the pictures printed with the storiesnote But only when Holmes was in the countryside, as in "Silver Blaze"; a gentleman wouldn't dress like that in the city — and stage productions. So many people consider them canonical that the 2009 film got criticized for dropping those elements. Basil Rathbone wore them in his classic 1939 films, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, more reason to associate this outfit with the great detective.

It's generally accepted these days to present Mycroft Holmes and the Diogenes Club as some sort of cover organization or outpost of the British secret service. This is largely an invention of later pastiches; aside from a few hints that Mycroft's job in the British government is a bit more extensive than he likes to admit ("on certain occasions he is the British government"), it's never really suggested in the original canon that either the club nor Mycroft are anything other than what they appear to be (a near-silent club for reclusive eccentrics and a Brilliant, but Lazy low-level civil servant respectively).

Holmes' relationship with "The Woman", Irene Adler, has largely been expanded from a healthy respect for the one person we ever see outsmarting Holmes to a Dating Catwoman-like Unresolved Sexual Tension situation at the very least, thanks more or less to this trope combined with Promoted to Love Interest. This gets even weirder when one remembers that Irene married her own lawyer during that case and had no romantic interest in Holmes whatsoever. And there's the fact that he only has any contact with her once (briefly) when he's casing her house under an assumed identity. The closest that they come to even having a conversation is when Irene leaves an extended letter for Holmes after she's already escaped.

Moriarty was never intended by Doyle to be Sherlock's arch-nemesis — this got applied to him by fans and later adaptations of the stories of Holmes. Holmes does describe Moriarty as "the Napoleon of crime" and Moriarty does play a role in two different stories, but that's as far as it got in Doyle's work in crafting Moriarty as an arch-villain — although the fact that one of these stories ended with Holmes and Moriarty fighting each other to the death and Holmes apparently killed off for good doesn't exactly hurt Moriarty's claim to the title.

Tolkien never explicitly stated that Elves in The Lord of the Rings and related works had pointy ears — in fact, no special physical traits are given except that they seem to be more slender, more elegant, and taller than men (thus implying that they might, apart from that, look more or less alike). In his letters, he shows the assumption that such an appearance was obvious (since English "elfs" have always been described as such), and explains how the Sindarin word for "ear" originates from their word for "leaf". It's also widely accepted in Tolkien fandom that Smaug was the last dragon. In fact, this is never stated anywhere in the books, and indeed some of Gandalf's dialogue with Frodo implies that there are still dragons out there — Smaug was merely the greatest of his age.

Arthurian legend has gone through many cycles over the centuries, so that many of the familiar features may be newer than you'd assume. The character of Lancelot, his affair with Guinevere, Mordred's incestuous parentage, and the quest for the Holy Grail all came about during the legend's resurgence in popularity during the late middle ages. Some of them likely came to us by way of Le Morte Darthur, which appears to be one of the older in-depth codifications of the legend. The best-known version of the "sword in the stone" story, as well as many now-common attributes of Merlin, were introduced in the 20th century with T.H. White's The Once and Future King.

This series is among the few fantasy epics that doesn't have any Doorstoppers among its volumes because C. S. Lewis, while not neglecting Character Development and worldbuilding, didn't take it as seriously as either Tolkien or modern Young Adult fantasy writers. As a result, the live-action films from the 2000s have more of such activity than the books do. The Prince Caspian film deviates enough from the book that the film continuity is considered an Alternate Continuity from the books, but even Fan Fic writers who explicitly reject film continuity may unconsciously accept film characterization for the Pevensies. There is subtle Values Dissonance between the two. When there was just one film, the fandom started to accept the film's version of life for the Pevensies before going to Professor Kirke's place, since C. S. Lewis didn't consider it relevant. Technically, it wasn't, but modern fans enjoy that sort of thing. Thus the Pevensies come from Finchley, since it's nice to narrow it down from "England".

World War II in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is simply there to get the Pevensies where they need to go. The live-action film pushed what was implied to the foreground, reminding people that you can't ignore that war if you have been in the warzone. Fanfic post-film reflects this, and is likely to include Mr. Pevensie at war rather than at university (which The Voyage of the Dawn Treader implied). The second film similarly reminded writers that the war had not stopped during the intervening year.

Lots of people think Caspian/Susan is canonical, when actually they barely talk to each other in the Prince Caspian book. The movie, however, did make it canonical. In the first book in which he appears, Caspian and Susan are both 13 years old, and he has more interactions with the 9-year-old Lucy than he ever does with her older sister. There are rumors that the movies were planning on foreshadowing Lucy/Caspian, to be properly set up in Dawn Treader, but when 26-year-old Ben Barnes was cast against 12-year-old Georgie Henley and 19-year-old Anna Popplewell, they decided not to go down that road.

The Terrible Dogfish from The Adventures of Pinocchio is a shark. The popular misconception as a whale parallels that from the story of Jonah (see "Mythology and Religion" below), but this time we can blame Disney.

Some critics find Plato's writing of Socrates to be this, since Socrates was emphatically opposed to writing any philosophical wisdom. Which statements were genuinely Socrates' and which ones were put in his mouth by Plato is a subject of much analytical debate. Plato certainly backpedaled on the statements that led to Socrates' execution.

Most fanart portrays him as splattered in blood and/or wearing a black shirt. Though canonically, he wears a white shirt (to match L), and he is meticulous about cleaning up after his grisly murders. This is most likely done to distinguish him from L, especially in fanarts where they appear together.

Harry Potter: The films instilled the idea that Hogwarts has free dress when the students aren't in class, that Ravenclaw house has a raven mascot and their secondary colour is white or silver (in the books, Ravenclaw's symbolic animal is an eagle, and their colours are blue and bronze), and that the students wear modern school uniforms under their robes (in the book, the robes are the pull-over-the-head type); students also wear pointed hats all day, not just at feasts. The movies also got fans to believe Beauxbatons is an all-girls school and that Durmstrang is an all-boys school, when both are co-ed.

For almost 20 years, the Goosebumps fandom universally accepted that "Karru Marri Odonna Loma Molonu Karrano" translates to "You and I are one now" in English, despite this never being established by any book, TV episode, game, Word of God or any official source whatsoever until 2015 (and that was just a promotional booklet released for the film adaptation). The closest was a line spoken by Slappy in the TV adaptation of "Night of the Living Dummy II": "You read the magic words. Karru Marri Odonna Loma Molonu Karrano. You and I are one now. You are my slave..." In context, it seems highly unlikely he was translating the incantation in that scene, but the idea stuck.

An inversion in Discworld: In discussions of canonicity, some fans will discount the diaries, cookbook, railway guide and sometimes even the maps, on the assumption they were mostly or entirely written by the co-writers and had Terry Pratchett's name slapped on them for marketing reasons. According to Sir Terry and the co-writers, this was very much not the case. If a book credits him as the main writer, he was.

Land of Oz has a very loose canon even going by L. Frank Baum's books. Over the decades, various non-canon or dubiously canon things have made its way into the general consensus:

In The Marvelous Land of Oz, the protagonist Tip is revealed to be Princess Ozma put under a spell as an infant and Raised as the Opposite Gender. Despite protesting before changing back to Ozma, Ozma herself has no issue with the change and is never boyish afterwards. Derivative works, published fan works, and adaptations often either make Ozma into a Tomboy Princess or show Ozma being uncomfortable with the change in the period between the second and third books.

Lurline is the fairy who created Oz. Over the years, Lurline has been upgraded from a fairy queen into a goddess. This appears in several derivative works such as The Wicked Years.

The two most commonly accepted designs for Dorothy are W.W. Denslow's brunette 5-7 year old looking Dorothy and John R. Neil's blonde 9-12 year old looking Dorothy. Both appear in derivative works, with Denslow's design being more popular due to it matching the more well-knownMGM film. In canon, Dorothy's hair colour isn't noted. Ozma's hair is also described as reddish blonde but she's almost always depicted as a brunette in (even the original) illustrations and adaptations.

Live-Action TV

Much The Man from U.N.C.L.E. fanon (THRUSH being formed by the remnants of Moriarty's organisation, Solo being Waverly's designated successor, "the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and Subjugation of Humanity", the Ultimate Computer, etc.) derives from David McDaniel's entries in the Ace Books series of UNCLE novels.

There are quite a few Trek examples, leading to cases where newer Trek — particularly Star Trek: Enterprise — was accused by many of being "inaccurate". Many aspects of fanon were confused with canonicity. Whether Enterprise did or did not deviate from established canonicity (and keeping in mind Trek has never been 100% consistent anyway, simply by virtue of how big it is), many of the more frequent claims were in fact based on widely-accepted but non-canonical fan assumptions. Among the biggest Word Of Dante was the whole "Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet" idea. Another is the "2218 Klingon First Contact". Neither was canonical, but were widely accepted along Word Of Dante principles for years. In these two aspects at least, Enterprise didn't deviate from canonicity.

Of course, since Enterprise's major first arcs involved large scale time-fuckeryanyway, you have to wonder how valid the claims would have been in the first place.

Among the biggest Word of Dantes, used in authorized but noncanonical reference books and the Expanded Universe, was that many of the major races such as Klingons and Romulans come from the rarely-mentioned-in-canonicity Beta Quadrant. Another is that, since several seasons are 26 episodes long and cover a fictional year, each episode covers two weeks. When the writers of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager indicated all the main races came from the Alpha Quadrant or had five episodes taking place over a month, many fans jumped on these as mistakes. It was finally made canonical in Star Trek: Into Darkness, making this an instance of Ascended Fanon. (Given he also made Uhura's non-canonical first name Nyota canonical (and has admitted he didn't know it only came from the novels), J. J. Abrams seems to be mainly using fan sites for research. Simon Pegg has since stated that the new films are set in a universe that is a complete rewrite of the original canon from the big bang onwards, making its relevance to the canon of pre-2009 series unclear.) This is thrown the other way in Star Trek Online, which reveals that the majority of the Federation systems (including Vulcan, Andoria, Tellar Prime, Risa, Betazed, and even EARTHnote Word of God-for-STO is that Sol is at the dividing line between the quadrants, it's just that the way the quadrants are implemented the system has to be in one quadrant or the other, so they went with Beta since that's where most of the other famous early Federation worlds are) are in the Beta Quadrant.

Starship combat in Trek video games almost universally assumes that phasers and disruptors work best against shields, and photon torpedoes work best against the hull. This is never stated in any episode or film, however. It's driven almost entirely by the fact that carving a hole in the enemy's shield coverage and then maneuvering a torpedo into the unprotected arc makes for more compelling gameplay than simply standing still and blasting directly at each other.

Linkara's Theory as to the cause of Power Rangers suits sparking upon being struck (essentially a Power Surge) has been adopted as canonical by the franchise's fandom.

The TV adaptation of The Green Hornet established Kato as a martial-arts expert and now audiences expect it.

A Big Name Fan named Jean-Marc Lofficier wrote some reference books in the eighties and nineties, which had quasi-official status through being published by Target, who also did the Doctor Who Novelisations. Although the real-world information about the series was mostly reliable, much of the Universe Concordance material included consisted of extremely speculative extrapolations from canonicity or pure fanfic, without any disclaimer being put in. It's still possible to find older Who fans quoting some of this stuff as canonical.

A common belief has been that the Ice Warriors of Mars have a ruling caste of Ice Lords. However, according to Doctor Who Magazine #489's "Fact of Fiction" article on "The Monster of Peladon", while the Ice Warriors do have an aristocracy, the term 'Ice Lords' is never used in the TV series. Though at least three Ice Warriors in the show have been tagged as Ice Lords by fandom - Slaar in "The Seeds of Death", Izlyr in "The Curse of Peladon", and Azaxyr in "The Monster of Peladon", all three wearing more streamlined and less crocodilian armour - only Izlyr is actually nobility, the other two being military officers. The term 'Ice Lords' apparently came from DWM themselves, back when they were Doctor Who Weekly, and quickly passed into fan consciousness.

The drive during the eighties and nineties to desexualise the Doctor, despite the fact he was canonically a grandparent, is more properly Word of God or Word of Saint Paul, given that some of the TV series' writers were putting out non-televised stories to support it. The whole thing was largely blown away anyway by the Doctor's romances in the TV Movie and especially the new series.

Avon surviving the Kill 'em AllBolivian Army Ending of Blake's 7 is pretty generally accepted in the Fandom, and might be a case of Ascended Fanon now that the possibility of a sequel/reboot including the character has been floated. The fact that one of the fans in question is Paul Darrow, the actor who played Avon, doesn't hurt this one's chances one bit.

Fans will occasionally invent names for forms and techniques to fill in gaps left behind in official information. One such example: fans tend to refer to the base forms of Kamen Rider Blade's Riders as "Ace Form", following the show's playing card theme (especially since the Mid-Season Upgrade and Super Mode are named Jack and King Form, respectively). However, Japanese sources actually use the term "Normal Form" (通常形態, Tsuujou Keitai), which is the name given to any Rider whose primary form doesn't have its own distinct name, like Ryuki, Faiz, and Hibiki.

Another example is how many Western Rider fans have adopted the term "Neo-Heisei" to refer to the post-Kamen Rider Decade era of the franchise. Japanese Wikipedia uses the terms "First Era" and "Second Era", which are occasionally used by Western fans (usually those who despise the phrase "Neo-Heisei"), though most don't even bother splitting the Heisei Era up in the first place.

The common myth that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri were enemies, or that Salieri killed Mozart, originates with the 1830 verse drama Mozart and Salieri by Alexander Pushkin, though most people know it from the film Amadeus. In real life, Mozart and Salieri stood on amicable terms, even writing a piece (unfortunately lost now) together, but a lot of people who should know better still discuss Salieri's supposed ill will toward Mozart as though it were historical fact.

The most popular origin story of John Newton's Amazing Grace claims the author's slave ship was caught in a sudden storm, causing him to repent his evil ways on the spot, and that the song was written shortly thereafter. What is true is that John Newton was a slave trader, he did pen the first verse of the song following a brutal storm at sea, and he did finish the song after giving up his slaving ways. However, it wasn't the storm that made him change his ways, he continued shipping slaves for years after that. The Damascus Road-esque instant conversion story was made up after the fact by people who didn't think the original was uplifting enough.

Mythology & Religion

Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy is the Trope Namer, and the most famous example. Anything you think you know about Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory was probably popularized by Dante, though very little of it is supported by Biblical canonicity. Considerable portions were also based on contemporary Church positions and local superstitions, both of which were still dominated by leftover bits of Middle-Eastern, Roman and Greek mythology at the time. There are also some Real Life people (such as Francesca da Rimini and Count Ugolino) that we only know of through Dante's work and the early commentaries explaining it. Note that many of them, especially the souls found in the Inferno, could probably have gone without being mentioned. Many among that group had wronged Dante in some way, and the general consensus among modern critics of Inferno is that Dante included them for personal reasons. There are so many of these people that some say Inferno is 40-50% political satire and requires extensive knowledge of contemporary Italian politics to understand.

This trope is older than the actual Bible we know today, with various other religious texts not included in canonicity but occasionally influential, known as Apocrypha. First there are the various deuterocanonical books which you might find after Revelation in your Bible (in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, however, they'll simply be in the Old Testament- there are seven, not counting the codicils of Esther and Daniel and the appendix to Daniel). These are considered by Biblical scholars (in varying degrees) to be not canonical, but not heretical. Why? A Serious Business but often some of it is as simple as obvious errors. Generally not found in modern Protestant Bibles but still available in common versions.

Beyond this there are Apocrypha not found in any widely available version of the Bible. One of the oldest and most referenced is the Book of Enoch, which is possibly the Ur-Example of Word Of Dante for The Bible. It notably has a lot of info dumping about angels and fallen angels and either started various beliefs or at least shows they go back into ancient times. The Book of Enoch was lost to Western scholars for a time but turned up in Ethiopia and archeological finds.

Other texts called Apocrypha were consciously discarded as Christianity took shape, some for being considered total fiction and others for being outright heretical. This category includes the Gnostic Gospels which get into very divergent beliefs compared to what Christianity became. Incidentally they contain no revelations as shocking as certain disreputable modern authors may claim to sell books.

"Apocrypha" has a specific meaning in terms of biblical studies; it refers to Old Testament books present in Greek sources (such as the Septuagint) that aren't present in the Masoretic Hebrew Tanakh. It does not, however, imply any criticism of the text, even from a religious perspective; indeed, some "Apocrypha," like the Books of Maccabees, are considered to be of great historical interest by those who leave them out of the canon, and in some cases there is not even a religious quarrel with the contents of the non-canonical text (for instance, neither Protestants nor Jews regard 1 Maccabees as having any objectionable doctrinal content—unlike 2 Maccabees, which they have numerous doctrinal quarrels with while accepting some of the historical details it preserves).

Some people have said that Mary Magdalene wrote a gospel, though this is generally considered non-canonical by the church. A book of it was put out a few years ago, however.

Paradise Lost is like this for the entire book, especially Satan. Satan only gets a few lines in the Bible, and not much that you could use to establish a sympathetic character. Paradise Lost also establishes the idea of angels playing harps.

December 25 is not mentioned as the date of the nativity. Most scholars believe it was in September.

The names and number of Wise Men who visited Jesus were not mentioned in the Bible; they come from 6th to 8th century sources. In Western Europe they were assumed to be 3 because 3 were the gifts they gave to Jesus, but in Armenia, for example, they were 12. What's more, they likely did not visit Jesus on the day of His birth or twelve days after. It could have been up to two years.

At no point in the Bible or any of the books that didn't make the cut is it said that there was an ox and a mule present in the Nativity scene either. Luke mentions a manger doubling for Jesus' cradle, hence why it's assumed that the birth took place in a stable. The specific animals come from the first live enactment of the Nativity scene in 13th-century Italy, where these two might have been added just because there were no others around.

The Bible also never specifically singles out the Seven Deadly Sins. That set comes from later saints and Church Fathers (and originally, there were 25 of them.)

Mary Magdalene is often identified with other females from the Gospels, including Mary the sister of Martha, the woman who washes Jesus' feet with her tears, and the woman caught in adultery. That is, she is considered to be one or more of them. However, there is no support in the Gospels themselves for these. Some of them are Church tradition, though. The originator of this idea is the sixth-century Pope Gregory the Great, also the man responsible for the Seven Deadly Sins (before him, there were eight).

Similarly, the Antichrist, who is mentioned only in the first epistle of John in the context of "many antichrists" (who are more likely general oppressors and heretics rather than specific apocalyptic enemies; basically, anyone who isn't pro-Christ), is often identified with various apocalyptic figures, such as the Beast from the Sea from Revelation, the Man of Sin/Lawlessness from Second Thessalonians, and the Little Horn from Daniel.

The only time "antichrist" is used is in the Johannine Epistles, and it refers to the proto-Gnostics in/around Ephesus that claimed that Jesus was a purely spiritual being (thus not really human in any meaningful sense). This was one of the major conflicts of the early church, since early Christian thought involved a mixture of sometimes-conflicting Jewish and Gentile ideas regarding the nature of the spirit, God, and humanity.

After Saul's conversion, he didn't deliberately change his name to Paul. His birth name was Sha'ul (Saul is the closest the Greek alphabet can come to rendering that name) and he never abandoned it. However, like many Romanized Jews he had a Latin name that he used when dealing with Gentiles—Paulus or "Paul." So basically, the author of Acts called him "Saul" so long as that's what his main associates (the Pharisees) called him; he got referred to as "Paul" once he began moving mainly in Gentile circles.

Nowhere in the Garden of Eden story does the Bible mention the name of the forbidden fruit, commonly accepted as an apple by people who aren't Biblical scholars. In fact, Jewish sources debate five or six possibilities, which include everything from fig to grapes to wheat, but no apple. The belief that the fruit was an apple was due to an unintentional pun found in the Latin Vulgate translations of the bible: Malum (apple) vs. Malus (evil).

In regards of the Devil, the popular image of a red-skinned, horned, goat-legged devil with a pitchfork is neither biblical nor has it ever been mainstream Christian teaching. The picture is a steady amalgamation of pagan symbols attached to Satan over the years in order to discredit them. In fact, in many early paintings he's represented as a goat that walks on his hind legs.

Much like the Devil, the popular image of God as an elderly, bearded man is based more off of Zeus, and violates the Second Commandment ("thou shalt have no graven images of Me"). YHWH's actual apperance in The Bible is less Physical God and more horrifying. In fact, Moses was the only prophet He allowed to see Him in person, and specifically said not to look at His face because it would be too much for Moses to withstand.

The only Biblical mention of "Lilith" is in Isaiah 34:14, where it's not even clear that it refers to a person; it's a plural noun and has variously been translated as "owls" or "demons." It's used a few times in the Talmud, but never as a mysterious "first wife of Adam"—that actually comes from a medieval book called the Alphabet of ben Sirach, which is generally interpreted as some kind of vulgar parody (the whole "who's on top?" issue is only one of its lewd topics).

Christian tradition teaches that of Jesus's 12 apostles, all but two (Judas and John) were martyred. The Bible accounts only for the fate of two of them: Judas (suicide/divinely ordained accident, the Bible gives conflicting accounts) and James (killed by order of Herod). Stories for the rest come from apocryphal and medieval sources.

There's nothing in the original Old Testament account of the destruction of Sodom which says the sins of its inhabitants included homosexuality. It's not until the Epistle of Jude in the New Testament that references to the sins of Sodom take on an explicitly sexual aspect, but still not an explicitly homosexual one. While a few Christian and Jewish philosophers had occasionally implied links between the two, it wasn't until Eastern Roman Emperor Justianian I explicitly defined 'sodomy' as same-sex sexual activity in his law code in the 6th Century CE that the idea that homosexuality in and of itself (as opposed to male-on-male rape) was Sodom's sin became widespread.

Quite a few tenets affirmed of the Catholic and Orthodox Church are not actually found in the Bible. Examples include immaculate conception (not to be confused with the virgin birth), the bodily assumption of Mary, and transubstantiation. They could be considered universally believed Words of Dante that were upgraded to Words of God via Papal fiat. However, the Catholics and Orthodox accept both the validity of Scripture and Tradition, with Tradition being the results of continuous deepening of understanding of theology. The Protestants generally do not accept these due to their belief in Sola Scriptura (Scripture only): all tenets of faith must be directly extrapolated from the text.

Exodus doesn't name the Pharaoh who Moses went up against, but pop culture has completely identified him with Ramesses II. note Archaeological evidence does not indicate this. Nor does it indicate a mass-migration of any people across the Sinai Peninsula, or a record of one. Indeed, what archaeological evidence does exist suggests that if the Hebrews did cross from Egypt to Canaan, they did so over half a century before Ramesses' reign, during the reign of Akhenaten.The Ten Commandments didn't invent the idea, but it probably codified it and later The Prince of Egypt codified it again for a new generation. It's reached the point where any screen adaptation of the story which doesn't call him "Ramesses" will simply not mention his name.

This results from confusion due to the mention of a couple of cities (either contemporary version of slums, or a huge collection of barns, scholars differ in opinion) built by the Hebrew slaves, one of which is called רעמסס ("Ra?amses" where /?/ is an epiglottal stop).

In the Bible, Moses' birth mother Yocheved was his nursemaid and Moses probably knew he was Hebrew since childhood. Virtually all modern adaptations of the story have him not find out until he is an adult, which is useful in that it adds another layer of angst to the story.

Virtually all (Western) art works, from The Last Supper to The Passion of the Christ, have depicted all prophets and common people in The Bible as of white European stock, including a very blue eyed and blond Jesus Christ, despite the fact that most people in the Holy Land were of Jewish or Middle Eastern descent. Jesus is also usually portrayed as a man with long hair, a beard and a white dress to emphasize his Incorruptible Pure Pureness, again something that isn't specificially described as such in the Bible. (The beard is historically likely, given that Jesus was Jewish and Jewish men of the era generally did have beards; the rest is just conjecture.) This is a common pattern in many depictions of Jesus, making him resemble the local people: here's an Ethopian Jesus◊ and a Chinese Jesus for reference.

Queen Jezebel is often associated with The Oldest Profession, despite never having actually engaged in it in the text. Rather, she was a Phoenician princess given in marriage to King Ahab to seal a political alliance (specifically, an alliance of Canaanite states against the invading Assyrians), who assumed the role of High Priestess in the name of her Pagan gods. The idea of her as a prostitute likely comes from the fact that she appeared in front of a palace window in all her makeup and finery before Jehu, and the fact that the religion she was trying to promote sometimes did involve ritual prostitution with certain designated priests and priestesses in the name of certain fertility gods, such as Ba'al and Asherah.note The money paid to the priest(ess) was considered an offering to the god(dess) s/he represented, and the ritual sex was considered a form of prayer. Her encounter with Jehu, however, was not one of trying to seduce or entice him, but rather because she wanted to Face Death with Dignity. Additionally, she shares the name with another wannabe Pagan high-priestess from the Book of Revelation, who herself may be getting confused with the Whore of Babylon. (Who is not a real person, but rather a personification of a culture of corruption and idolatry, to be contrasted with the Church, described as the Bride of Christ.)

In the Book of Esther, Xerxes' first queen, Vashti, whose refusal to appear naked before her husband's party guests sets the plot into motion. According to some Midrashic interpretations, she was a terrible person who abused her (mostly Jewish) servant girls and forced them to do things like work on the Sabbath and eat unkosher food. According to these interpretations, she was arrogant, vain, and haughty, and the real reason she refused her husband's summons was not because she didn't want to parade naked before a bunch of drunk guys, but rather because as punishment for her mistreatment of her servant girls, she had been punished by an angel with some kind of embarrassing disfigurement. (Most commonly said to be the sudden and unexplained growth of a penis.) The text itself, however, supports none of this. The only "bad" thing she did in the text was refusing her husband's summons, which was viewed as treason by her patriarchal society.

According to some extrabiblical traditions (as well as Islam), the Virgin Mary was born to her mother Anne (who had her at a relatively old age after struggling with infertility for many years), and while she was still a toddler, was dedicated by Anne to work in the Temple as something not unlike a Miko until she was old enough for marriage, at which point the High Priest would arrange a marriage for her in place of her father. According to this school of thought, she was fed and cared for by angels during her time of Temple service, and (at an improbably young age, like elementary-school-age-child young age), she made a vow before God to remain a virgin her whole life. The Biblical text says none of this, and more likely, this account was an amalgam of Samuel (who really was dedicated to work in the Temple by his mother, who had also struggled with infertility), and accounts of Pagan priestesses, such as the Vestal Virgins of Ancient Rome. It would have been rather unlikely, as only men from the Tribe of Levi served in the Temple. What's more, they probably would have been rather leery about letting a girl or woman serve in the Temple (in any capacity), because many of the Pagan nations around them practiced ritual prostitution in their temples and shrines, which was (and still is) a huge no-no in Judaism. They wanted to avoid even the appearance of or potential for that kind of impropriety. (Keep in mind that the prevailing view was that All Women Are Lustful.)

Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses are like this for Greco-Roman myths. Ovid cobbled together different Greek sources and added his own imaginative touches to create the definitive versions of most of the Greco-Roman myths we have today. The Aeneid standardized the story of Aeneas, which had previously existed in a bunch of variations and hadn't been as popular as, say, Romulus and Remus.

The popular image of Santa Claus is taken from A Visit from St. Nicholas ("'Twas the night before Christmas..."). Before the poem was published in the 1820s, everyone had their own idea of what he looked like and how he traveled around. The popular modern image also owes a lot to Thomas Nast's cartoons of Santa in the 1860s.

The modern perception of Norse Mythology and religious practices is mainly based on Christian or Muslim sources, such as the chronicle of Adam of Bremen from the 11th century, Ibn Fadlan's brief depiction of life among the Norse in Russia, or various texts by Icelandic skalds in the 13th century (such as Snorri Sturluson's manuals on how to write poetry).

Stories about King Arthur have been told and retold to the point where this happens. T. H. White's The Once and Future King is probably the best known these days, although most people are at least aware it's based on an older set of legends. Malory's Le Morte Darthur (or his Complete Works) is usually the main "canon" but Malory makes no secret of drawing from other books... some of which scholars today can't identify for sure. Even then, these books are following mostly off of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain and the romances of Chrétien de Troyes and others, and not the often forgotten (and often missing) Welsh folktales... which may or may not predate the accounts of Roman historians from not long after the time that mention Arthur (confusing especially since Gaius, who was present for this part of history, is the one person who never mentions Arthur).

Neither The Qur'an nor Muhammad ever said anything about martyrs receiving the company of 72 virgins in paradise. The idea was first written down by a commentator 200 years after the death of Muhammad. And some scholars now think the word he used meant "grapes" or "raisins," not virgins.

The Hadiths of Islam can be seen as an example of this trope: a huge body of phrases attributed to the Prophet but not actually part of the Qur'an, a sort of Ascended Fanon.

The more fundamental differences between the sects of most major religions are largely due to separated groups coming to consider Word Of Dante as Word of God due to prolonged lack of contact or as a deliberate decision.

Everyone knows that Medea poisoned her children after Jason left her. However, older sources state it was either an accident, or the citizens of Corinth were the murderers. Medea didn't become the murderer until Euripides started writing the play, and the Corinthians convinced him to change it (with a large bribe, that is). In other words, a case of Not His Sled that was Lost in Imitation.

Theatre

The "official" scenario of The Seven Deadly Sins was not written by Bertolt Brecht, though it was adopted by choreographer George Balanchine.

In Dark Souls, the identity of Lord Gwyn's firstborn son is kept ambiguous, with only a few vague hints given that he even exists. However, certain high-profile members of the Dark Souls fanbase like EpicNameBro have suggested (based on some very valid in-game clues) that it is Solaire, a theory which has become so popular among the Dark Souls community that many fans accept it as canonical despite From Software's silence on the matter. This may have even been Jossed with the release of Dark Souls III, however, which features a character (definitely not Solaire) whom the game hints to be Gwyn's firstborn about as heavily as it can without actually coming out and saying it.

Bungie imported the concept of rampancy from Marathon into the Halo series, and made it part of an AI's natural life cycle after seven years of existence. Nowhere, however, is it stated that Halo's AIs follow the same rampancy pattern of "Melancholia - Anger - Envy" as Marathon's AIs, or that there is a possibility for AIs to advance past those stages and become Metastable. Regardless, this has become a basic concept in the fandom, and appears commonly in post-Halo 3 fanfiction surrounding Cortana. This probably has something to do with the old common fan theory that the two series share a universe.

Additionally, Jul 'Mdama's Covenant remnant has no official name (other than "The Covenant"). However, several fans call them "The Storm", thanks to a mistake made by an Official Xbox Magazine article. This hasn't been helped by the fact that the remnant's lowest ranks are officially called "[Species's name] Storm", even though Word of God states that "Storm" is simply a generic designation for any Covenant soldier who specializes in stormtrooper-type tactics.

Herobrine is a character from a Minecraft creepypasta. Many people now think he's a real character, either Notch's dead brother or a dead miner. It eventually became Ascended Fanon by constantly appearing in official release notes as a Running Gag. Herobrine has now been "removed" several times from the gamenote Often used to reference the removal of coding for the Human, aka Monster, mob, which was never actually used in the game, then later played straight as a gag, and another bugfix stated that "all ghost entities under the command of Lord Herobrine" had been removed.

Touhou: Hisoutensoku, the third fighting game in the series (numbered 12.3) had no official English title, a first for the series. For a few months after its release (and intermittently afterwards) the game was referred to as Unthinkable Natural Law, after a loose translation of its Japanese title.

8-Bit Theater has led to many people assuming characterizations and personalities in the comic are canonical to the Final Fantasy games. In particular, that White Mage is a girl (though many people already assumed this long before 8-Bit Theater existed), to the chagrin of male White Mage cosplayers everywhere. Or that black mages in general are psychopathic murderers, which is hinted at in Captain SNES: The Game Masta, even though no appearances of playable Black Mages in the rest of the series have portrayed them as anything even close (worst would probably be Palom, who was a little bit rude, but definitely not evil). And no, despite his ears, Thief is not an elf.

In the originalFinal Fantasy, the White Wizard was either a male or a Bifauxnen, with the latter being more widely believed. However, since most healers in the series since have tended to be female, and 8-Bit Theater had White Mage as a female, most fans assume the original NES White Mage is also a female. The developers seem to have gone with this, since in the remakes the White Mage's higher-resolution sprites are female or otherwise androgynous, and the games that suggest names for the party members pick mostly female names for the White Mage. In addition, Square Enix developed Mario Hoops 3-on-3 and Mario Sports Mix, in which White Mage is a playable character and is undeniably female.◊

The series has this in the form of "Obscure Texts", supplementary items written by the series' developers and former developers. They're essentially treated as canonical by most of the fanbase (or at least the equivalent of the series' famous in-universe Unreliable Canon), but Bethesda has no official stance either way. Most prolific is former developer Michael Kirkbride, who still does some freelance work for the series. Most of what he writes about are the more obscure aspects of universe's cosmology which don't get expanded on in the games, as well as lore figures the games never touch upon or that Bethesda is simply finished with (like Vivec). However, since some of them either might be subsequently quoted or used as a mythopoeic basis for the games, the line between Word of God and Word of Dante is blurred concerning his writings. As of Skyrim, some of the concepts in his works have been officially referenced in game (the idea of "kalpas," Ysgramor and his 500 companions, and some of the motivations of the Thalmor), moving them to Canon Immigrant status.

Among the fandom, there's the notion that Sheogorath is the only person in the Shivering Isles allowed to grow a beard, which is generally agreed upon to the point where it was stated on the wiki. The evidence for this one comes from the fact that Sheogorath has a beard and that if the player goes to the place Sheogorath teleports you to when you try to attack him, where he drops criminals from multiple feet in the sky, there's a body with a note saying that the man was executed for having a beard. However, the note doesn't specify anything other than that he had a beard — for all we know, the crime could be that it was longer than Sheogorath's, not that it was there in the first place. This being Sheogorath, he might just have made up a random baseless excuse to kill the guy.

People who found Mega Man (Classic) through Bob and George are often confused by the fan-character "Ran," usually asking which game he came from. A lot of this has to do with the fact that, for a while, Ran's creator let just about anyone who asked use the character, meaning he showed up everywhere. This (and the very large sprite-sheet leading to him having as many or more poses as game characters) led people to believe so ubiquitous a character must have come from the games.

If Ran himself is asked, he will often answer that he is from Rockboard, an obscure Japanese only Mega Man themed NES board game video game.

Any prominent Magikoopa in the Mario series is assumed to be Kamek. It doesn't help that Kamek is Magikoopa's Japanese name. The same issue happens with Toads that have red spots on their hats being assumed to be the Toad, and green Yoshis being theYoshi.

Rosalina being a princess isn't canonical; however, fans overwhelmingly consider her one. No game has her listed as "Princess Rosalina," but Peach, Daisy, and Rosalina are considered the princess Power Trio. Some non-canon media accidentally refers to her as "Princess Rosalina", which helps fhe misconception.

Daisy and Peach are frequently depicted as cousins in fan works; officially, however, they are just best friends. This concept comes from a Prima Strategy Guide mentioning them being cousins.

The Ōkami fandom is quite pissed at the idea that Yami's different forms represent mankind's destructive nature. This wouldn't be too much of a problem if it wasn't a theory by Chuggaaconroy that dozens of people accepted as canonical. The Okami Wiki even has a notice on Yami's page warning that anyone who tries to post any theories about what his forms represent will be banned, and that "just because Chuggaaconroy mentioned the definitions of Yami's forms does not make him a reliable source."

Chuggaaconroy also posed the theory that Wes, the protagonist of Pokémon Colosseum, was originally planned to be the villain of Pokémon XD. There is so far no Word of God to back this up, but many fans still take it as being true just because Chuggaaconroy said it.

Web Animation

Homestar Runner: On its fansite, the Homestar Runner Fanstuff Wiki, many aspects of the 20X6 characters added in the more popular fan works seem to be thought of as canonical by many of the wiki's members, such as Stlunko not using contractions (only appearing in the game Stinkoman 20X6, Stlunko only had one line in the manual which had no place for a contraction in it), the most major example being 1-up's obsession with pudding, whereas in the canon pudding appeared in a single toon, and 1-up said "I want pudding" once. It also influenced the creators, giving names to the minor characters (the Visor Robot, for example) among other things.

A related example to the Halo/Marathon one above comes into play. The show has never officially been stated to take place in the Halo universe; while a number of things do hint at it, a lot of other things imply otherwise (or at least imply things took place in a different order from in Halo). Still, many theories revolve around how things work in the Halo universe. Interestingly enough, considering the above discussion on Halo and Marathon AIs, an episode of season 10 implies that the Marathon concept of AI development actually does hold true in the RvB universe!

Another RvB example is how Big Name Fan Luke McKay did a well known series of what the various characters look like underneath their helmets. Since McKay both eventually did official (albeit not related to RvB) art for RT, and some of the RT guys expressed appreciation of the designs, the fandom latched into the designs as "canonical". Which has led to the revelation of some of the characters turning out to not canonically look like McKay's designs (notably, South looking completely different, Wash being blond rather than brunet, and Maine being bald instead of ginger) causing some grumpiness in the fandom. However, Wyoming actually looks pretty close to McKay's design.

Fans were also fairly annoyed when Allison/Tex was shown to be blonde and not a redhead as McKay had drawn.

Webcomics

MSF High suffers from this at times. Since the Question and Answer threads are sometimes answered by people other than Wraith, they run the risk of being Word Of Dante. Also, a lot of people use elements that haven't fully been fleshed out, which can lead to embarassments in the forum roleplay. Such as thinking Legion have green blood.

Ask just about any fan what the currency of the Alternian Empire is and they'll answer "caegars." The only caegar we see on screen is only used for coinflips, and their use as currency is implied only once (when Karkat described Vriska as a "run of the mill little psycho girl, a troll caegar a dozen"). Caegars as the official imperial currency has been widespread in Fanon since Nepetaquest 2011 featured the titular character using them to pay for a map.

Likewise, the troll deity is widely assumed to be "Gog," thanks to trolls referencing "Gog" and "Jegus" in conversations with the kids. The fantroll community has pointed out that the canon uses of the term "Gog" are intentional references to a Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff misspelling. In other instances, the trolls say "oh my god" instead.

Due to limited true canonicity on the workings of troll society, the fantroll community has a lot of accepted fanon that the "Stop Having Fun" Guys see it as their responsibility to defend against Canon Defilement by non-conforming fantrolls. Among these:

That trolls see themselves as a Master Race and wipe out any species they conquer (canonicity never states why or how they invade planets).

That trolls are drafted offworld when they reach 10 sweeps (canonicity never specifies the exact age at which this happens).

And that they are visited by the Imperial Drone at the same time and then never again (also never specified in canonicity, which, in fact, seems to imply that mandatory pailing comes around on a regular basis).

Hussie intentionally left the human characters' race and ethnicity unspecified, stating only that the sibling pairs should have similar genetics. (He did accidentally let slip a reference to Bro as a "white guy", but when this was pointed out he temporarily turned it into a blob of gibberish, suggesting that this may be Canon Discontinuity.) However, generally accepted fandom is that all the kids are white but John and Jade have black hair while Rose and Dave have blond hair. Depictions of Dave with red hair used to be much more common until he was revealed to be Rose's ectosibling.

The fan base speculated and theorized at length about the Class of Aspect titles assigned to player characters. A generally-accepted pseudocanon has accumulated to explain their mythological significance, connections to personality and characterization, and implications for future plot developments. Calliope's lecture to Roxy on the nuances of the class system (passive vs. active, gender-specific, and master classes) may actually be taken as a reference to and parody of the class/aspect Word of Dante, since the narration and some of Hussie's Tumblr statements imply that she's overgeneralized based on a limited sample size.

By Word of God, characters in The Order of the Stick have most of their stats left undefined, so that Rich can have them do what serves the plot's purposes without realizing he's accidentally painted himself into a corner. This doesn't stop the Class and Level Geekery thread on the forums from trying to analyze everyone's actions and work out what level they "need to" be to do what they've done.

A poignant final line in his first (and, for over a year, only) appearance led a fair chunk of the Welcome to Night Vale fandom to conclude that Scoutmaster Earl Harlan either had or wanted to have a romantic relationship with narrator Cecil Palmer. This in turn led to quite a fracas when Earl returned voiced by Wil Wheaton, due to Wheaton being straight (the creators had previously made a point of re-casting another role so that a gay latino character would be played by a gay latino actor.) Shortly after, Wheaton offered up Word of Saint Paul stating that the two were only good friends, proving the original romantic assumption to be this.

Matthew Patrick of Game Theory is one of the most prolific and notorious Word of Dante spreaders about video games, films and TV shows, usually using evidence from real life equivalents or interpretations of the subject's lore to prove his point. He is also one of the more criticized examples due to the Fan Dumb spreading his theories as canonical everywhere, sometimes even engaging Flame Wars against people who disagree with him. To somewhat prevent this, Matt now set up polls at the end of most of his Wild Mass Guessing videos, asking the audience if it agrees with him.

Western Animation

Michael Demcio was the first to use the names Chip "Maplewood" and Dale "Oakmont" in his epic Chip 'n Dale Rescue RangersFan FicRhyme and Reason, released in 1996 as the first of its kind. Ever since, these names have been established as fanon.

In the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon proper, only first names are used — except for Presto, who is only known by his nickname. An early fanfic by Victoria Bishop, "The Gathering," gives everyone full names, since it's depicting how they all met. The story in full is not part of general fanon, but most of the invented names have been reused. Two naming concepts in particular are widespread:

Eric having the last name Montgomery. He must just look it. This concept is so established in fanon that it can easily be mistaken for canonicity.

"Presto" being short for Preston. This one is probably because of elegance — making a double meaning, making the nickname a Line-of-Sight Name, and explaining why everyone uses it when names are used in true canonicity. The main reminder that this isn't canonical is there still disagreement on whether Preston is a given name or surname...

Many legal concepts and bits of phraseology that are treated as part of the U.S. Constitution actually originate from contemporaneous letters, speeches, or Supreme Court decisions. These are not binding legal precedent unless and until they are cited by the Supreme Court in a ruling...as many have been over the years. In accordance with The Common Law, The Supreme Court relies on such sources to determine the intended meaning of sections of the Constitution. James Madison's secret notes from the 1787 Philadelphia Convention are considered very strong evidence of original intent. The Federalist Papers are also considered particularly persuasive as they were written by major figures from the Constitutional Convention shortly after the document was drafted and sent to the states for ratification.

Ideas and phrases from the Declaration of Independence are frequently conflated with the Preamble to the Constitution. Religious conservatives use the Declaration's mentions of "Nature's God" or "Creator" to argue that the United States was intended to be a specifically Christian nation. Leaving aside the fact that many of the Founders were deists and may not have associated "Nature's God" with Christ, the Declaration holds as much legal standing as the Articles of Confederation (which is to say, none whatsoever). The only reference to religion in the original articles of the Constitution is a specific prohibition on religious tests (i.e., requiring membership in a church or profession of faith) for any federal office.

While the phrase "separation of church and state" (and variations thereof) is always cited in discussions of the First Amendment, it derives from Thomas Jefferson's description of the intent behind the First Amendment's Establishment and Free Exercise Clausesnote The former clause prohibits the US government from establishing a religion, endorsing religion, or creating a state church, while the latter prohibits it from restricting the free exercise of religion. in a letter to the Danbury Baptists. The phrase has since been cited in Supreme Court rulings and thus become valid legal precedent, but it is nowhere in the original text of the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court's power of judicial review (i.e. deciding whether or not a law is constitutional) is not enshrined in the Constitution, but was established in 1804 via the landmark decision Marbury v. Madison. This isn't to say that judicial review was created out of thin air by the Supreme Court: the Constitution is (obviously and by its own admissionnote The Supremacy Clause, or Article VI, Section 2, which states that "This Constitution...shall be the supreme law of the land.... (Emphasis added)) a law and under The Common Law laws are subject to judicial interpretation. Marbury is simply the Supreme Court (or rather John Marshall) explaining the consequences of common law jurisprudence interacting with an entrenched, written constitution.note In a nutshell: The common law says that the judiciary gets to decide what the law means; when laws conflict, they get to decide which law trumps which. Because Britain has no written, entrenched constitution, all laws can be changed by a simple majority vote in Parliament: if a Statute A passed in 1789 seems to abrogate Statute B passed in 1779, then Statute A trumps Statute B (generally speaking). However, the Constitution, while a law like any other, cannot be changed by a simple legislative majority—the bar is way higher. This means that a Congressional statute that conflicts with the Constitution cannot be valid, because Congress alone cannot change the Constitution. And since the judiciary decides what laws mean—including the Constitution and statutes—and the Supreme Court is the highest organ of the judiciary, the Court gets final say on what laws are valid and invalid.

A lot of what people "know" about King Richard III comes from the imagination of William Shakespeare (whose patron was Elizabeth I, the granddaughter of Richard's rival Henry Tudor) or from earlier Tudor propagandists.

While Richard appears to have suffered from scoliosis, he was not as severely and grotesquely deformed as Shakespeare suggested.

The Duke of Somerset, killed by Richard in Shakespeare's play, died when Richard was three years old.

Richard is widely believed to have ordered the extrajudicial execution of his own supporter Lord Hastings (who may have opposed his decision to depose Edward V) and of the Woodville supporters who had been escorting the prince. However, this accusation was recorded in the Croyland Chronicle by a former chancellor of Richard's who may have been currying favor with Henry Tudor. Other sources put Hastings' arrest on the 13th of June (the day of the council chamber meeting) and his execution, after a trial, on the 20th. He had legal justification for doing so, as the Woodvilles were trying to circumvent Edward IVs will naming Richard Lord Protector.

While most people of course know that the magical and supernatural parts of Macbeth aren't real, they generally take for granted his characterisation as a power-hungry tyrant, and assume he murdered his predecessor Duncan, because that's what is portrayed in Shakespeare's play. In fact, before the play was written Macbeth was generally considered to have been a good King. Duncan was killed by Macbeth's men, but in a battle, not a planned murder.

France's national motto "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" is generally referred to as dating back to The French Revolution. The phrase definitely originated during the revolutionnote Credit for formulating it is given to Hebertist Antoine-François Momoro and also toMaximilien Robespierre. The phrase did not gain popularity until the 1848 Revolution, and did not become France's official motto until the 1870s., it was not an official or even common motto at the time. In fact there was no "official" motto as such and the motto competed with "Liberty, Unity, Fraternity" or "Liberty or Death". The phrase fell out of disfavour when the National Convention poster during the Reign of Terror adopted it: Unity; Indivisibility of the Republic. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death and it was seen as too revolutionary for most of the governments until the Second and Third Republic.

Napoleon Bonaparte is commonly depicted as being short, almost to the point of being a dwarf in cartoons and comics. This image is mostly based on British political cartoons who portrayed him as a pathetic little man.note There was also a mix-up between British and French meters at the time. In reality Napoleon's height was thought to be around 5' 7'', slightly taller than the average man in his day, and not even that unusual in modern times. It didn't help that he was almost universally seen with his royal guardsmen, chosen from the Grenadiers, who were always very tall.

Many of the things people think they know about the famous warrior Miyamoto Musashi aren't actually historical facts, but come from the classic novel Musashi.

In an interview with The Paris Review, Wolf Hall author Hilary Mantel discusses how this trope often comes into play when (made-up) details from works of historical fiction are later taken to be true. She gives an example from her own novel of the French Revolution, A Place of Greater Safety: "In [the novel], Camille Desmoulins wonders why he was always running into Antoine Saint-Just. We must be some sort of cousins because I used to see him at christenings, he says. Its now become a 'fact' that they were cousins. Things get passed around so easily on the Internet. And fact becomes fiction and fiction becomes fact, without anyone stepping in to ­arbitrate and say, What are your sources?" She also mentions a short story by Raymond Carver about the death of Anton Chekhov. Carver invented a character for the sake of the story, and the invented character has gone on to be included in subsequent biographies of Chekhov!

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